New Releases

To some, Naveed Mahbub is the perfect example of all that is inconsistent. But to him, life is all about gathering as many experiences as possible. So, his life's journey takes him from being an engineer, to being a CEO, to being a stand-up comedian and then a writer. This is a part of his journey to tell one hell of a great story to his grand kids.
The fact is, life in Bangladesh is so ridiculous, that it fully deserves a chronicler of the skill and erudition of our comedian. Who else could do this thing justice? Reading this book actually brings back the fantastic quality of our life here, the stories to tell, the everyday things we witness when, portrayed on paper with his trenchant wit, brings home what kind of circus we are dealing with.
-Saad Z Hossain

Shahzaman Mozumder was barely out of his childhood when Pakistan launched its war on the Bangalees in 1971. It was a war of unparalleled atrocity against an innocent people that ultimately cost 3 million lives. But the Bangalees did not sit idle. They took up arms to fight back. Mozumder was one of them. As a teenager who should have gone to classes rather than taking guerilla training he joined the war. Instead of holding pens, he held machine guns. He fought in Teliapara of Sylhet.
The Guerrilla is his own story of how a boy became a soldier and showed so much of heroics to get the gallantry award of Bir Protik. It is a moving tale of the war, every moment of it comes alive with his lucid description. Its details are so vivid that the heroics, the tragedies and the moments of life and death pass before your eyes like a motion picture. It shows how a soldier can only hope for another day’s survival.
The book makes us live 1971, once again.

Category: Fiction
Author : Farah Ghuznavi
'Fragments of Riversong' showcases a dozen masterfully-crafted tales that bring alive the beauty, chaos and contradictions of contemporary Bangladesh. Here are scenes from lives less often examined.
A visa applicant at the US Embassy struggles with her conscience. Strange things happen when a street child finds his life intersecting with those of a wealthy housewife and a teenage schoolgirl. A guava tree becomes a source of conflict between an unorthodox grandmother and her stubborn grandchild. A successful architect suddenly finds herself the reluctant guardian of two children. A young man returns to his village in order to come to terms with bereavement. A Bangladeshi-American schoolgirl learns a hard lesson.

Category: Economy
Author : MIRZA AZIZUL ISLAM
Macroeconomics, one of the most needed subjects to be researched and understood, in the perspective of today’s world. For a country to reach her zenith from the economical views there is no other way but to find out the ways by researching macroeconomics.
Mirza Azizul Islam, one of the leading Economists of our country at present, tried to find out the implications and implementations as well influences of Macroeconomics in today’s world, especially Bangladesh.
ORDER NOW

Category: Sports/Non-fiction
Author : RUDI V WEBSTERBlurb:
'When you understand that pressure is part and parcel of your life and there are things you can do to control it, you will face up to it in a positive way and use it to your advantage'
---- Rahul Dravid
A medical practitioner who has done pioneering work in the field of sports psychology, Dr Rudi Webster draws up a fail-safe recipe for on-the-ground performance enhancement in this remarkable book. He ropes in some of the world's finest sportsmen to explain their own success techniques: Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Rahul Dravid, V.V.S. Laxman, Clive Lloyd, Dennis Lillee, Wasim Akram, Jacques Kallis and Sir Garry Sobers. They talk about the four interconnected pillars that performance in sports is built on: fitness, technique, strategy and mental skill—but, unanimously, they declare that the mental pillar is the most important. At the highest level of sport, it's this skill that determines how well the other components are combined and executed.

Category: Fiction
Author : Syed Manzoorul Islam
The stories compiled in this collection constitute a very small part of Syed Manzoorul Islam’s creative writing. Put together, they nonetheless show all the traits unique to his storytelling. His narrator is continuously talking to readers, preparing them for the twists and turns the stories take. When the stories begin, readers are invited to become the narrator’s co-travelers as he promises to take them through a world where the boundaries between dream and reality blur every so often.
The stories are told with poise and humour in the great Bengali oral tradition. His characters come from the fringes of society as well as from the urban middle class, and are drawn with compassion, understanding and power. Their desires and deprivations, their ecstasies and frustrations are all presented in a narrative which is magical and lucid at the same time.

Category: Sports/Non-fiction
Author : Sharbari Zohra Ahmed
Sharbari Zohra Ahmed’s stories are spread across continents, involving characters from an old Japanese woman to a Bangladeshi child making friends with downtrodden kids in Ethiopia, to an adopted American woman of Bangladeshi origin. In other words, these are stories of cultural encounters.
The title story is about Mrs. Nagai, an elderly and amicable Japanese woman whose husband was an ex-Japanese soldier during the Second World War. It incorporates conflicting narratives of the war, without tilting to any one side, but it is through Mrs. Nagai's character that readers see the war in a new light. In 'Pepsi', a culturally alienated Bangladeshi girl whose father is a diplomat in Ethiopia spends time with a bunch of poor kids living across the street only to see them evicted as a consequence of this friendship.

Popular Reading

This book is a selection from ‘Gossip: Sweet and Sour’ and ‘Malice’, in which Khushwant Singh, one of India’s most prolific and popular authors, gives you ‘the low-down’ on people he has known and places he has visited. In these pages, you will be introduced to people like Mountbatten, Faiz, Shraddha Mata, P.C. Lal, Phoolan Devi and many others and you will travel to places as well known as Pakistan and Korea and as remote as Papua New Guinea. Bangladeshi readers will find the chapter on Bangladesh particularly interesting.

Editor's Pick

As a young law graduate in Sialkot (now in Pakistan), Kudip Nayar witnessed at first hand the collapse of trust between Hindus and Muslims, and like multitude of population was forced to migrate to Delhi across the blood-stained plains of Punjab. From his perilous journey to a new country and to his first job as a young journalist in an Urdu daily, Nayar’s story is also the story of India. Widely respected for his columns, his autobiography opens on the day Pakistan resolution was passed in Lahore in 1940 and takes us on a journey through India’s story of a nation working on its foreign policy, economic reforms, relations with neighbouring countries, and dealing with coalition politics, among others. From events of historical and political relevance like the Tashkent Declaration and the 1971 war and liberation of Bangladesh, to interviewing Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and from meeting Pakistan’s father of nuclear bomb, Dr A. Q. Khan, to his close association with Lal Bhahadur Shastri and Jayaprakash Narayan, Nayar’s narrative is a detailed inside view of India since 1947.

The Daily Star starts its book publishing wing, Daily Star Books, today through the launching of emi…

Daily Star Books, Daily Star Books, the books wing of the Daily Star, aims to expand English readership in Bangladesh by making scintillating works of English fiction and non-fiction more accessible at an affordable price. It wishes to introduce Bangla literature to English readers the world over through excellent translation, a goal yet to be accomplished. It also aims to provide a solid platform for promising Bangladeshi English writers to be published. Daily Star Books provides home delivery service. The home delivery service is totally free of cost for orders generated within Bangladesh. Orders are taken from and delivered at any part of the world. For details, see the link How to order.

To order over the phone, please call 8801756220320, 8801672218885. E-mail: muhtashimurrahman@gmail.com